Friday Afternoon News Updates: Trump’s China Trip Was a Complete Dud — 5/15/26

Trump returned from Beijing with absolutely nothing to show for it

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Friday. We’ve just about made it to the end of another week. Here are the latest updates.

Top Stories We’re Tracking Today:

• Trump’s China trip called a “dud” — even by MAGA accounts

• Trump confuses Taiwan and Iran during Air Force One press conference

• Trump brags about Kim Jong Un friendship while North Korea builds nukes

• Trump sides with Xi Jinping over Biden over the word “dictator”

• Trump still refuses to admit US missile killed 168 girls at school in Iran

• Trump attacks more reporters

• Trump doesn’t discuss tariffs at all with Xi

• Putin heading to Beijing right after Trump leaves

• Iran warns of “economic paralysis” and prolonged war if US strikes again

• Jim Jordan on high gas prices: “That’s life”

• DOJ invokes assassination attempts to defend Trump’s White House ballroom project in another Truth Social-style motion

• Trump posts about golden statues, China’s ballroom, and a National Garden of American Heroes

Before I get into the details, I want to thank all our subscribers! Today’s midday briefing is paywall free. If you appreciate these briefings and are not yet a paid subscriber, consider upgrading to be a paid subscriber today to get full access to future reports!

The China Trip Was a Dud, and Even MAGA Is Saying It

Let’s start with what even the MAGA world knows to be true. A commentator over at RedState — not exactly a liberal outlet — wrote this after the trip: the US got a non-binding Boeing order at less than half its original size, and some vague talk about soybeans. China, on the other hand, walked away with profuse praise, trade concessions, support for purchasing American farmland, 500,000 student visas, AI chips, softer demands around Iran, and a de facto recognition that Taiwan is negotiable. His conclusion, like ours, is that this trip was a dud. A mess. A disaster.

To add insult to injury, Vladimir Putin is heading to Beijing on May 20th, just days after Trump left. Right after whatever that was that Trump just did in China, Putin is flying in to actually sit down with Xi and coordinate. None of the pomp and circumstance. Just getting down to business.

Taiwan Who?

Aboard Air Force One, things went completely off the rails. A reporter asked Trump about Xi’s warning that US support for Taiwan risked military conflict between our countries. Trump’s response made it instantly clear he thought the reporter was talking about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. He doesn’t even keep the countries straight in his head.

When asked point-blank whether the US would defend Taiwan if it came to that, Trump said he didn’t want to say — and that Xi had asked him the same question and he’d given the same non-answer.

Then a reporter brought up the 1982 Reagan-era assurances — a longstanding principle that the US would never consult China on arms sales to Taiwan. The reporter noted that Trump appeared to have done exactly that. Trump’s response was basically: 1982 was a long time ago. He confirmed he’d discussed arms sales with Xi in “great detail” and would be making a determination. Those arms sales are required by US law. And now, after a stroll around some trees in Beijing, suddenly he’s taking his time.

I’ve been saying for sixteen months on this network that Taiwan was going to get thrown under the bus. Nothing I saw this week changes that.

On the subject of Chinese cyberattacks inside the United States, Trump was somehow even worse. When asked if he’d raised it with Xi, he shrugged and said we attack them too. We spy on them. They spy on us. What’s the problem? The problem, Donald, is that you are the President of the United States. Your job is to defend American sovereignty, not to explain why it’s fine that China hacks us because we hack back.

And tariffs — the one thing this entire administration has been defined by, the issue that tanked the markets and sent prices through the roof — never came up. Not once. The self-proclaimed tariff president flew to China and did not discuss tariffs.

Kim Jong Un Has Nukes Now, and Trump Is Bragging About Their Friendship

Trump brought up his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un while speaking with reporters. I want to make sure people understand what that relationship has produced. North Korea is now conducting regular cruise missile and ballistic missile tests. They have nuclear weapons. They built those weapons during Trump’s presidency, under the cover of his friendship and photo ops. When North Korea so much as launched a test missile under Obama, Fox News ran wall-to-wall coverage. Under Trump, silence. At the same time, the threat of future nuclear weapons are being used to justify military action against Iran. The hypocrisy and the danger here are staggering, and it remains one of the most underreported stories of the last decade.

Side note: I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

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Now back to my report.

Trump Defends Xi, Attacks Biden for Calling Him a Dictator

A reporter brought up the fact that Biden had publicly called Xi Jinping a dictator. That was US foreign policy — looking authoritarian leaders in the face and telling the truth about what they are. Trump’s response was to call Biden incompetent and defend Xi. He also credited Biden with the Iran nuclear deal, which was actually the Obama administration — a deal, by the way, that actually stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without a war and without shutting the Strait of Hormuz. Trump pulled out of it, and here we are.

Watching Trump take Xi’s side over a sitting American president’s foreign policy is not normal. Trump likes to talk about “treason” a lot lately. He even called a reporter on Air Force One today “treasonous” for reporting accurately about Iran. But it’s hard to think of something more treasonous than Trump defending Xi over American foreign policy

Trump Still Won’t Acknowledge U.S. Strike on a Girls’ School in Iran

A BBC reporter asked about the US missile strike on a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, where over 160 children were killed. Trump said it was under investigation. The reporter pressed further and Trump attacked the outlet, claiming the BBC had “put AI in his mouth” — a complete fabrication. The BBC did not do that.

This is his playbook. He’ll say it’s under investigation forever, and then expect all of us to get distracted and move on. He did this with Melania’s immigration story during the campaign. “I’ll hold a press conference in two weeks.” Two weeks never came.

Iran, Nukes, and the Risk of a Much Bigger War

On Iran’s latest nuclear proposal, Trump said he looked at the first sentence and if he doesn’t like the first sentence, he stops reading. That’s where we are. Americans can’t afford gas, can’t afford homes — and the man responsible for all of it won’t read past the first sentence of a potential deal. Sources close to Iranian parliamentary leadership are warning that if Trump fails to secure Chinese pressure on Iran’s nuclear program, the US will move to strike Iranian targets, and Iran would respond by activating its missile systems at near-full capacity against US and Israeli bases and Gulf power stations. The word they’re using is “economic paralysis.” A prolonged regional war. The end of American influence in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister is at the BRICS summit calling on member nations to collectively push back against US coercion.

Ballrooms, Golden Statues, and a National Garden of Trump’s Friends

After this catastrophic trip, Trump came home and posted about ballrooms. Specifically, that China has a ballroom, and therefore America needs one too — to be built at the White House, opening around September 2028. The Justice Department has now filed another brief in federal court arguing that opposition to the ballroom project is “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and that the ballroom is a matter of national security, citing assassination attempts as justification. The phrase “militarily top secret ballroom” is used unironically.

Trump also posted a photo of a gold statue of himself erected at his Doral resort. It looks like something you’d see outside a palace in Pyongyang. He thinks it will become a landmark.

And Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to renovate East Potomac Golf Links — a public course — into a championship facility, awarding the contract to Fazio Design, a firm with longstanding Trump ties. The cartoon map posted alongside the announcement doesn’t even have the Washington Monument in the correct location.

Not done yet. Trump announced plans to transform West Potomac Park — describing it as “a totally barren field,” which it is not — into something called the National Garden of American Heroes. Statues of people Donald Trump has decided are heroes, on prime DC waterfront real estate, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Jim Jordan Has a Message About Your Gas Prices

Kaitlan Collins asked Jim Jordan about record-high gas prices and the economic pain Americans are feeling right now. His answer: “That’s life.” Moments later, he told Collins he never said that.

That’s life. That is the Republican Party’s message to working Americans in May 2026.

Let me know what you think. Thanks to all of our subscribers and to everyone who continues to spread the word.